


Please Stand By

by Wandrian



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9610925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandrian/pseuds/Wandrian
Summary: Nora is feisty and a bit inscrutable, much to the chagrin of her companions. This is a patchwork of one-shots revolving around Vault 111's sole survivor and her adventures in the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth. SS/Hancock leanings for good measure.





	1. Got a Light?

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> _"I'm calling it right here. This world can officially bite my ass."_  
> 

As it turned out, tossing pebbles down amongst a pack of angry, confused mutant hounds from atop the edge of a dilapidated freeway had _not_ been one of Nora's brightest ideas. It was all fun and games at first, with Nick hovering behind her and muttering darkly to himself whilst casting pointed, unimpressed looks her way whenever she deigned to snigger, until the ominous _tick, tick, tick_ of a suicidal Super Mutant manifested from a nearby bus.

She blinked. "Oh shit."

Nick glanced at her slantwise, murmuring, "Is this a good time to ask if you believe in karma?"

Nora did. Well, _had_. 210 years prior, times had been much simpler. Good was white and bad was black and indoor plumbing was taken for granted. Then, she staunchly believed you reaped what you sewed, good deeds and bad intentions alike. There was no in-between. But now? Now everything was gray and muddled and gone to nuclear shit. Still, Nora tried to be a good person—the _same_ person, even if irony had bitchslapped her in the face because, yes, she was still a mother, but had lost her child in a wasteland; her wedding ring still glinted in the sun, but her husband was dead. She killed people to keep others safe, not unlike an old world soldier, but now wondered if cause and effect influenced anything worthwhile this new radiated age that took and never gave.

Whatever good karma she had banked in the hopes of keeping her family safe had been exhausted the moment the cryogenic chamber had locked her in Vault 111, and Nora was quick to learn that the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth held no mercy for a bleeding heart.

"If you're referring to yesterday morning," Nora countered, a hand snaking for the rusted sniper rifle slung across her back. "I will have you know that I did, in fact, pay Myrna for the flip lighter. She just wasn't _looking_."

Nick levelled her a glower.

"You paid for it with pre-War money."

"It's legal tender. Nobody has stated otherwise."

"The entire Commonwealth begs to differ."

With a noncommital shrug, Nora tucked the butt of her rifle into her shoulder and pulled one quick round straight through the blinking red light of the Super Mutant's makeshift bomb. It exploded in a mushroom of gore and nuclear refuse and a litany of plastic forks. Casually, she picked and flicked yellowed flesh off her arm as Nick waved smog out of his face.

"Remind me again," he began. "How many days did you say it's been since you escaped 111?"

"I didn't. Why?"

The full weight of the detective's unblinking, synthetic eyes had whittled information and confessions out of hundreds before. But none of them were Nora, who had taken to enthusiastically skirting his questions like it was a national sport of old, and was peering at him with an overtly beatific smile as she fluidly popped a new clip into the rifle.

"You know your way around a firearm for someone who's lived the majority of her life behind a white picket fence," Nick replied.

She waggled a brow. "Careful, detective, that's borderline _assumption_. Whatever will Watson say?"

"Who?"

Nora sighed, "Never mind," and was about to open her mouth again when her head snapped up, dark eyes zeroing in on something in the distance.

She didn't direct him to fall back with the customary sharp flick of a wrist. Instead, Nora slid forward, grabbing a handful of Nick's trench coat and tugging him behind her with all the strength her small body possessed. A moment later a grenade clattered where he'd been crouched.

Another Super Mutant had appeared, head bobbing through the windows of the bus. It cackled boastfully.

"For you, human," it bellowed. "Hot potato!"

"Nora!" Nick seethed heatedly, grabbing a hold of her vault jumpsuit. " _Move_ –"

With the tip of the rifle's barrel, Nora fluidly clocked the grenade over the ledge a mere three feet behind them. It exploded below and the death throes of several mutated hounds momentarily filled the air. Her answering grin was bright-eyed and sly, before she began searching the pockets of her utility belt until extracting the flip lighter she'd filched from Diamond City Surplus. With a flick, it lit, and she chucked it at the Super Mutant's feet.

The iridescent swirl of gasoline sloshed around its grayish toes, and immediately caught fire. It, too, exploded, raining down more gore and the blasted innards of a Carlisle typewriter.

Nora pivoted on a heavy boot, arching a brow at Nick.

"What?" he asked defensively.

"Kinda glad I bought that flip lighter, huh?"

" _Stole_ , you mean?" Nick rectified, then pressed his lips together thoughtfully. "You like proving people wrong, you deflect questions with more questions, and you seem to possess a built-in bullshit detector. Either that sole survivor story is fabricated and you're a synth, or you were a lawyer before the bombs fell."

Nora tensed, face darkening for a millisecond before it contorted into an expression that looked like she'd just masticated a mouthful of rotten mirelurk eggs. Her eyes flickered away, towards the horizon peppered with the silhouettes of skyscrapers.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Nick hedged, voice quiet.

Truth be told, she hated these moments. Hated when Nick got that look in his eyes. The one that calculated. That analysed and _knew_. The one that put two and two together, tallying up all the snippets of her past until they mapped out a nice little a picture that gave an unhindered view of all the demons and ghosts that still lurked from a life long lost. The interview with Piper had been one thing, had been on her terms where she divulged only what she'd wanted published, but the detective's probing gaze struck all pressure points.

Not that he used it as ammunition, but remembering life as it used to be was like skirting a psychological minefield. Most memories were perilous because they were raw, dithering creatures. Fortunately, she took comfort in the way repression hardened her skin and tunnelled her vision in the endeavor of finding Shaun.

Slowly, Nora wiped sweat and grime off her palms onto the bright blue jumpsuit of Vault 111. The fabric was becoming threadbare now, and the knees in particular would soon need patching thanks to her preference of stealth tactics over open combat. She pulled at the wayward thread, glancing at the detective before heaving a sigh.

"You're right. It's true," she said, and took a deep, cathartic breath. "I'm a synth. Do you need to see the 'Made in The Institute' stamp on my ass as proof? Damn, Valentine, everyone's right—you _are_ good."

The detective had the good grace not to appear too needled, but eyed her as he stood.

"Whittling information out of you is like teaching a brahmin voice commands," he muttered dryly. "It's not dangerous, nor impossible, but it's full of the unexpected and guaranteeing several stages of groan-inducing irritation."

"Moo."

Nick sighed heavily.

"I'm sorry, Nick. We were having a moment before, weren't we? That was a moment. It just didn't _feel_ like a moment and–"

An explosion cuts her off. The flames that were still puttering with life from Nora's lighter trick had amassed into a fiery detonation when a trickle of gasoline from an adjacent car snaked downward, setting off a chain reaction of decrepit automobiles combusting in succession like a line of dominos. They were both blown aside. Nora was sent slamming straight back into a meridian, body quivering from the force and breathless with pain, her vision threatening to blackout. Nick took the worst of it, however, being buffeted several feet into the air and over the freeway, landing amongst the deceased hounds far below.

After a few agonizing moments, Nora heaved herself upright with trembling arms, dots speckling her line of sight.

"What a literal pain in the _ass_ ," she lamented weakly, pressing a hand against her ribcage. "Why couldn't tubes of Bengay survive a nuclear holocaust? Damn, that smarts."

Noting the detective's absence, she scrambled to her feet, taking a moment to breathe deeply until her vision stopped swimming and the knifelike jabs of pain in her side abated. Tentatively, she peered over the edge.

"Shit," she seethed, before springing forward.

The freeway had been shorn apart half a century prior, revealing skeletal rebars that descended towards the ground below, making it easy for Nora to climb down. Once reaching Nick, she saw that one arm was dangling by several sparking wires due to a muffler's exhaust pipe lodged into the fleshy mesh his shoulder. He was barely conscious, the yellow sensors of his eyes surging erratically like they were on the cusp of short circuiting.

"For the record," he said, voice like gravel, as Nora carefully aided him upright. "I blame you for this. Of all the people traipsing the Wasteland for me to follow, an insatiable pyromaniac hellbent on secrecy had to go and save me from the bowels of Vault 114. Now can we kindly find someplace safe where my servo motors and drives can comfortably break down in _peace_?"

Nora clucked her tongue, sliding his good arm across her shoulders. She managed to mask a sharp wince as the detective leaned heavily against her.

"I've told you a million times to stop exaggerating, Valentine. You're not going to _die_. I'll get you patched up and functioning at a 100% in no time, and then you can be salty at me all you want. Oh, wait. Excelsior!"

"What now?" Nick groused, watching as Nora unsteadily swiped something from off the ground.

"Look, one of the hell hounds had it."

She held up a fancy gold-plated flip lighter between two small, calloused fingers, the brightest of smiles etched onto her face.

Nick groaned in defeat.


	2. Mum's the Word

Nora does not immediately take to Diamond City. Memories worm their way up from the stands, the Green Monster peeks out vividly from between the hodgepodge of ramshackle buildings, and there are moments when Nora swears she inhales traces of the buttery aroma of Fenway Park's concession popcorn rather than Takahashi's over-cooked noodles whenever she gets a haircut.

She refuses to step on any of the bases.

But it is close to Sanctuary, and its marketplace has a tantalizingly eclectic blend of vendors, and it is heavily fortified. And it has Piper Wright in it.

"What state were you born in, Blue?"

They are sitting outside of Publick Occurrences, the beginnings of eventide tinting their surroundings with shades of dull gold and rust, The Great Green Jewel's walls turning to jade. Piper is watching her with a hawkish eye from where she's perched atop a crate, leather newsboy cap flipped around, notepad in one hand and a half-masticated sweet roll in another.

There is a small sea of candy wrappers littered around the reporter, almost in a perfect sphere like they are stuck in orbit of Piper. This is not an uncommon sight. Piper Wright's affinity for sugar-rushes is nearly synonymous to Mama Murphy's addiction to riding the chemical highs of Jet.

("The hyperactivity clears my head," she'd once explained, a little defensive, when Nora mentioned this.

"It makes you jumpy. You tried to shoot your own shadow."

"I thought someone was sneaking up behind you!"

"Yeah, _you_.")

Nora could be crotch-deep in the Boston Harbor, chewing on RadAway, and every part of the experience would feel arid and profaned because atomic annihilation had swaddled the Commonwealth in everything Doom and Gloom; it was these little idiosyncrasies, however, that secretly plucked at her heartstrings. It's been nearly over two hundred years since she'd last had a friend, and it was these little endearments that was slowly returning Nora's faith in humanity.

And also because Piper shared.

Nora takes a long pull of Nuka Cola, the radiation constricting the muscles around her jaw until they loosen and tingle.

"Infancy," she answers.

Piper is halfway writing this down before she groans.

" _Blue_."

" _Piper_."

The space beneath the canopy is strewn with tackle, from a pile of stimpaks, a bobble head, and—even though Nora exclusively carries an old sniper rifle she'd exhumed from a corpse and a combat knife—there are towers made from boxes of every kind of ammo imaginable. They surround her like a miniature stronghold, but she's edged a couple of mutfruits beyond the barrier and into Piper's line of sight in case she wants to consume something healthy.

Nora wriggles her toes. Her boots have been unlaced and tossed to the side along with her utility belt, vault jumpsuit zipped down to her waist to reveal a threadbare tank top and the old scars and new bruises of past scrimmages painted across her skin. She shivers, unused to this moment of repose and the way dusk's breeze is pushed in from the Fens, but it's a better alternative than stewing in the stick of sweat.

She hums an old world tune about undersea sponges whilst carefully unloading a mini nuke from a rucksack. Piper studiously tries to catch her eye. Nora ignores her.

Piper ignores Nora ignoring her.

"So, Blue," she begins, tone official and pen at the ready. "What can you tell me about your newfound ability to ricochet an enemy's bullet straight back to their head?"

 _Birds of a feather_ , Nora muses, because they are both relentless creatures. The problem is that Nora's both unrelenting and uncooperative, and therefore forced by genetic predisposition to cast Piper a lopsided grin.

"Well, it makes an _excellent_ party trick."

"Don't test my gumption, Blue, I have no qualms publishing that."

Lowering a boatfly gland she'd been inspecting, Nora asks slowly, "Are you threatening me?"

Piper laughs. "Maybe?"

She snorts and tosses the gland behind her. "I was frozen for two hundred years, Piper, and you published _that_. I'm used to all the ogling that interview spawned. Except Myrna won't look me in the eyes. Can you believe she keeps asking if I'm a synth?"

"Yes!" Piper gripes dramatically, but the effect doesn't take because she is trying fruitlessly not to smile. "Why can't interviewing you be as simple as a walk on a Sunday afternoon?"

Nora offers, "It is a Sunday afternoon."

This response causes Piper to visibly deflate, much to Nora's amusement. She tosses her notepad aside and shoves a rather large portion of the sweet roll into her mouth. Nora nudges a mutfruit encouragingly with the tip of a toe, but the reporter merely flaps a hand towards the surplus around her.

"Are those plasma grenades? You hate explosives," she says, mouth half-full. "Are we gearing up for round two of nuclear Armageddon?"

It takes everything within Nora not to physically recoil at the thought, but there is also no way she's going to satisfy Piper's curiosity by telling her that she's taking inventory in hopes of beginning a new supply line from out of Sanctuary. The Castle was still rebuilding from the Mirelurk Queen's reign of terror and Preston was politely whining about new laser turrets; being the recently appointed General of the Commonwealth Minutemen meant she had to play nice with the other children and share the wealth.

She is also aware of Piper and Nick's covert meetings to discuss and dissect her actions, thanks to Ellie, who takes _notes_. On paper, her deeds made her sound like a heroine from a war-torn epic. On holodisk, she was a "sarcastic" but "charismatic" loose canon.

Nora could roll with that.

"Nope," she says, popping the 'p'. "Just testing your _gumption_."

Piper levels her with a truly impressive unimpressed glower. It's better than Valentine's, who, being a Gen-2 synth, has little more facial expression range than an alarm clock. Nora is about to say as much when Piper launches the remains of the sweet roll at her and hops off the crate.

She commences to mutter beneath her breath in rapid succession, lips moving in an angry blur. Nora wipes at the sticky residue of icing from her shoulder.

"Piper, your mumbling is nearly breaching the speed of light."

The reporter latches her eyes onto Nora. "I said that maybe I'll go write another article about that kid who got shot in the head," she snaps, picking up her notepad and marching towards the front door. "Everybody loves a good western about couriers who spit bullets. At least that's a story worthy of a _sequel_."

She vanishes inside Publick Occurrences, leaving behind a plume of dirt after slamming the door shut. Nora resumes her inventory only a little guiltily. That is until she catches a flash of pink in her periphery, and watches as Natalie Wright attempts to sidle into the house undetected.

One of Nora's eyebrows raise in interest. Nat has full-on tip-toed past her, clutching something cylindrical beneath her coat, clearly under the impression that Nora is too engrossed behind her towering encasement of ammunition boxes to notice.

Nat is nearly to the door when she pops her head above a column of 5mm cases.

"WHATCHA GOT THERE, COWGIRL?"

Nat squeaks and seizes to a halt. "N-nothing!" she stammers, whipping around.

A brown bottle is poking out of Little Piper's pink coat, unbeknownst to her. Nora can even see the top portion of cream-colored label, with the printed words **UISCE BEATHA** in clear sight. Nat notices this, and thus flushes a neat shade of tomato before hastily tucking it underneath her arm.

Nora takes a sip of Nuka Cola. She smacks her lips. Nat waits, eyes blinking owlishly.

"So, here's the deal," Nora begins, tone overtly blithe. "I'm a mother and we have these, uh, _things_ in the back of our heads."

Nat peers at her skeptically, an expression that makes her look almost identical to her older sister. "Really?"

"Yes. Sit." Nora points to an opening close to her right.

Nat sits, tense, still careful not to expose the whiskey bottle. She notices a pack of bubblegum left behind in Piper's wake, but Nora snatches one of the mutfruits before Nat makes a move.

"Eat this," Nora orders.

Nat does, tentatively, and cranes her neck to peer at the back of Nora's head.

"I don't see anything."

"Only other mothers can see them."

"What are they?"

"Eyes!"

Nat scrunches her nose. "That's _gross_. What are they for?"

"They see _all_ ," Nora waggles her brows theatrically, before nodding at the kid's coat. "Just like that bottle of whiskey you stole."

Nora almost breaks into a grin when Nat abruptly stops chewing. Her face turns tomato-y again.

"I didn't–"

"You did," Nora nods sagely.

The young girl resumes her owlish blinking, befuddled, mind undoubtedly churning for a prompt, irrefutable response. Then she huffs, sliding the bottle out and plopping it down reluctantly in front of Nora. Nat eyes Nora with apprehension. Nora eyes Nat with delight.

"How did you know?"

Nora points to the back of her head emphatically, thinking: S _o this is what it feels like?_ _It's a little sadistic. I like it._ But before her thoughts can venture further, Natalie thrusts a finger in her face. Nora's eyebrows skyrocket from the abruptness.

"Don't tell me not to," the girl young declares with a special brand of vehemence only the Wright women have mastered. "Because Piper says that you skim the till at Arturo's."

With a slow and judicious blink, the picture of pokerfaced, she watches if Nat will squirm under the pressure of her gaze. She doesn't, all cocked and loaded and ready to cross swords, not unlike her sister, which causes a swell of fondness for them both to manifest in Nora's chest. Which causes Nora to thrust a finger in Nat's face just to see her go cross-eyed for a millisecond.

"Guilty," she says, a cockeyed smile cornering her lips. "But that's because he's a suave, overpriced asshole. And that's _me_. Inquiring minds want to know about _your_ stint of larceny."

Nat deflates a little, her eyes skittering away. "Pete Pembroke said that Piper was a hack," she explains, tone laced with bitterness. "But if I stole a bottle of whiskey from the Taphouse he'd take it back."

"What a little shit," Nora breathes, then: "Also, you rhymed. You're a po _et_ and you didn't even know _it_."

" _Blue_."

"I won't tell Piper, if that's what you're worried about," she continues, thwacking Nat's knee to notify her that she was about to say something serious. "I'm about to say something serious, so listen. Pick your battles, Nat. Trust your instincts. Do what you feel is right, not what you think is expected of you. Just be careful."

"Would you have stolen it?" Nat asks, peering up through her bangs.

Nora mashes her lips together, wondering if Piper Wright's sister knows how loaded of a question that is. The world is no longer black and white, but muddled in so much gray that it sometimes twists her mind. The Wasteland epitomizes unpredictability, the true loose canon in the grand scheme of things; she's still figuring how to fit into the picture, which steps will land her closer to Kellogg and her son, or which steps will land her closer to Kellogg and an unmarked grave.

 _I'm not the same person_ , she thinks. _Who would be, after a nuclear metamorphosis?_

And she says as much.

"Before... before the vault, I'd do anything to keep someone from slandering my family's name."

"And now?"

Now the Nate-sized hole in her heart pulsates with pain, still raw around the edges. It'll take another 200 years to heal. It's been days, _weeks_ , since the great escape from Vault 111, and every night before she slips into an uneasy unconsciousness Nora agonizes that he's still down there, still frozen, still with a bullet in his head. Still needing to be rescued and buried and put to rest.

Nora's hands ball into fists where Natalie can't see them, knuckles stretching, bloodless and white and quivering. Her eyes are hot. There's an inferno where her heart should be.

Thoughts of Shaun are too excruciating to endure, so she doesn't. Dithering around the fact that her son is gone and gone and gone threatens to drown her in insanity. It's already spilling over.

"Now? Now I'd make them pay for trying. But they're gone. Nate is... gone. Shaun's out there, somewhere. It's only me that would get hurt because of it. You, Natalie, still have family. What I meant before, about being careful, is that growing up is nothing more than a line drawn in the sand and learning where to step. Stay true to yourself, but take care not to hurt those you don't want hurting."

 _It should have been you_ , a voice whispers in a dark recess of her mind. _You should be back there, hole in your head, your casket the cryogenic stasis pod. Not doling out motherly advice.  
_

Nat sighs, "Piper is going to be disappointed."

Nora exhales, long and a little shaky, but shrugs when Nat notices. The cockeyed smile is back, if a little forced.

"A little, yeah, but some snot-nosed kid who can't even steal his own liqueur and his vapid little opinions won't hurt her, but I suspect she'd be secretly pleased with your _gumption_. Unfortunately, your sister is a saint when it comes to delinquency. She doesn't even let me get away with pickpocketing or peer pressure, and I'm _way older_ than her."

Nat's head snaps up. "Someone's pressured you into something, too?"

"No, I was just trying to be empathetic," Nora shrugs, but then amiably shoves the girl's shoulder. "Okay, kid. Shoo. Ya bothering me."

Nat rises to her feet, careful not to knock over any of Nora's survival paraphernalia. She lingers just a moment, right when Nora snatches the whiskey bottle to examine the label closer.

"Thanks, Blue," she says quietly. "And you do, you know, have family. Us."

Nora flaps her hand diffidently, unable to speak because suddenly her heart has decided to lodge itself in her throat, but watches the younger of the Wrights head towards the front door. She clears her throat.

"Hey, Nat," she calls, rolling the bottle between her small hands. When Nat shoots her a questioning look, Nora's answering smile is the most genuine it's felt in centuries, wide and warm and captivating in its rarity. She winks. "Aces on nabbing the _good_ stuff."

It's only a minute later that Piper strolls outside, who stops dead in her tracks once her eyes fasten onto Nora. The whiskey bottle is all but forgotten, as are the waist-high steeples of ammunition and other various apparatuses and wasteland vegetation, because now Nora is in the midst of digging like a madwoman into a rucksack for one of her brahmin-leather pouches of bottle caps.

She doesn't notice Piper is unleashing her trademark expression of inquisitiveness, or that the wide, warm smile is still spread prettily across her lips. Or that her heart hasn't felt this full since before the bombs fell. Or that Diamond City no longer feels so full of triggers.

Piper's shadow falls across her line of sight.

"Blue?" she says carefully.

"Yeah?"

"Uh, where'd you get the booze?"

"That," Nora responds, ducking under her shoulder to flash her a sly grin. "–is confidential. _Yes_. Excelsior!"

Piper has to stumble back as Nora rips past her, heavy boots perilously unlaced but kicking up dust in her wake. She swiftly ties the pouch onto one of her vault jumpsuit's belt loops, causing the caps to jingle and jangle merrily with every tread towards the marketplace. Glancing behind, she catches Piper, with all her investigative reporter glory, taper her eyes onto her.

"What?" Nora laughs.

"You're acting strange," Piper responds, but then reiterates. "Well, _stranger_."

"It's been two goddamn centuries since I've pushed a tiny person out of my vagina, Piper, but today I finally felt like a _mother_. I'm gonna talk to Arturo about some missing caps. Don't wait up!" Nora beams, nearly colliding into a DC security officer bedecked in an umpire's uniform, who'd been in the midst of giving her the stink eye. "What are _you_ looking at, jock strap?"

Piper blinks. "Wait, what?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I just wanted to write something that included Sole humming the _Spongebob Squarepants_ theme while handling a nuclear device. Thanks for reading! Eternal gratitude/sugar bombs for feedback.


End file.
